


Syzygy

by rednihilist



Series: Ecliptic [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dramatic Sexy Times, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Pre-Slash, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:43:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6823351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednihilist/pseuds/rednihilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A friendly hand, a comforting voice, someone to share a glass of wine with, these are soothing things, small moments he's learned to appreciate, for in truth they are what makes life worth living, more than helping heal a realm or destroy a villain ever could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No profit is gained from this writing—only, hopefully, enjoyment.
> 
> Syzygy: the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system.

The bastard, the dwarf, and the waif: of the three, he'd choose a strong drink. Daenerys was born deposed, sold off by her closest living relative, lost and losing even as she reached out and conquered, but she is undeniably stunning, a woman in a world that despises women, yet an unparalleled beautiful, intelligent, infamous, well-connected woman nonetheless. She is no bastard, who was almost certainly disparaged more than praised and yet similarly comely and indisputably commanding respect, nor is she a dwarf, who was himself once well-connected and remains exceedingly intelligent but has never been considered either attractive, to anyone apart from travelling oddity troupes, or commanding of respect—apart from Jaime perhaps and oddly enough Varys (and these days also that waif and that bastard). Not bad company, all told. A motley group they are, misfits, liars, and broken things, all rallying around this dragon queen like something from a song his once-wife might enjoy, his once-wife Sansa who is Jon's cousin and not Jon's half-sister because Jon is not Eddard Stark's natural son but his nephew, through Lyanna Stark, by Rhaegar Targaryen, Dany's brother, making Jon Dany's nephew.

That drink is looking more and more appealing by the second.

"I used to wonder where it all went," says a voice from behind him.

Tyrion scoffs, nodding in acknowledgment even as he's filling a glass with wine. He pours a second, turning and offering it to Jon with a wry look.

"And have you reached a conclusion?" Tyrion asks, briefly raising his glass in a token toast before gulping, quite crassly, a large mouthful of Daenerys's surprisingly fine wine.

Jon's facial expression says it all, every thought going through the man's head on full display across his face, and Tyrion still can't definitively say whether that lapse applies to everyone or just a select few. Perhaps he's just hoping it's the latter, something, some small piece of the puzzle gifted only to Tyrion, deliberately, intentionally, not a trick or scheme as it's always been with everyone else. Mayhaps Tyrion simply wants to trust Jon when he's been able to trust so few others.

As Tyrion takes another mouthful of wine, this time savoring it, rolling it along his palette and letting it smoothly coat the interior of his mouth and throat, Jon holds his eyes, his lips almost perpetually downturned but something about the crinkling of his eyes and the tilt of his head giving away his mirth, however scant or perfunctory the emotion may be.

"You're sustained by drink," Jon says, "as most are by food and water—well, equal parts drink and sarcasm, I'd wager."

Tyrion actually cracks a smile at that, nodding on his way to resuming his seat before the fire. He gives the man his back, feeling Jon's eyes on him and, as with only two or three other people in the entire world, not caring overmuch about his pace or gait to the chair, not bothering to hide the awkward hitch up onto the seat or distract Jon's attention from the fact that his legs no longer touch the stone floor. Here and now, Tyrion doesn't feel the need to hide or compensate for his body's literal shortcomings. Here and now, Tyrion can acknowledge he feels not the lack of what others like Jon, with his tall stature, fine build, and handsome face, often take for granted, and that contentment, that acceptance, comes from the knowledge of what lies behind and inside that well-formed body of Jon's and the awareness that here with him Tyrion is likewise viewed as a whole person, a complete man, and not some rough sketch of a demon monkey or Imp or even Tywin Lannister's youngest son, albeit usually "the smart one" (which dear Jaime himself would almost gleefully, proudly corroborate). To Jon, he has finally accepted after having it proven to him time and time again, he is Tyrion—nothing more and never anything less.

And it's somehow genuine: the respect and admiration, the kindness and consideration, the affection. Tyrion plays a very, very good game, and he does modulate his facial expressions and body language and voice and words around everyone, including Jon, but it is not always easy, and in moments like these, when it's the two of them, or with Daenerys and her impassioned bluntness, or even Varys and his deadpan dark humor, Tyrion does long to take off this armor he's forged for himself, strong and effective as it's proven itself to be. He does wish and acknowledge that wish, if only within the confines of his own head, to give Jon the same gift of trust in return.

For as Jon Snow, who's friend and ally and who Tyrion almost routinely admits he wishes were also something more, follows him to the fireside and leans up against the mantle, placing his own glass of wine up on the stone and holding his hands near the flames not a foot away from Tyrion, it's exceedingly and yet not unexpectedly difficult to refrain from looking at him, staring in all honesty, at those long limbs and fine features. And it's not envy or at least not primarily, for Tyrion is honest enough with himself to admit that there is always something envious and bitter lurking within him, his own fire that burns ever brightly, like Dany's need for validation almost to the point of dependency, or Cersei's thirst for dominance above reason and at the expense of what passes with her for love. Tyrion is larger than most in some regards and yet just as small in others.

"You're unusually quiet tonight," Jon says then, with that uncanny sense of timing. Tyrion realizes he's not been upholding his end of the conversation, and of course leaving the heavy verbal lifting up to habitually taciturn and monosyllabic Jon is laughably cruel; the man's a vault.

Tyrion shrugs, keeping his eyes on the flame and off Jon Snow. "I suppose we all have our moments," he says quietly, catching Jon moving from the corner of his eye, "even I."

"Tyrion," Jon says, and he's right there, right at Tyrion's left shoulder, having silently walked behind the chair just to come up behind him. How odd, the fire and their voices having gradually fallen to near-whispers, making the present seem located only to this room, this moment.

And now he's either had too much to drink and is a few intimate words away from doing something irrevocably foolish, or he's had too little and is in desperate need of drowning both his sorrows and his tongue. Either way, the answer is to lift the glass of wine once more to his mouth and use it as camouflage, Jon finally stepping out from the shadows at Tyrion's back and coming around to perch, somewhat rudely, on the ornate low table, pushing aside custom glassware and more bottles of fine Dornish wine that, being arranged in a relatively large display, a different man than Tyrion might think implied a censorious comment on his drinking habits but which, since it is Tyrion, is merely a practical and considerate gesture in making him feel at home.

"What is it?" Jon asks, looking at him in such a way, those blasted grey eyes trying to catch and hold on to him, that Tyrion just about gives up and folds right there like a tower of cards. Targaryen as Jon has proven himself to be, he's still more wolf than dragon, more noble and stoic than bold and unearthly, except at times like these in close quarters.

"I look at you, and I still see that painfully young Northern bastard yearning for recognition," Tyrion's mouth blurts out, the words circumventing his better judgment entirely and potentially flying right into Jon's face like a hit with the flat of a blade.

But only mildly nonplussed and even somewhat amused, Jon simply smiles back at him.

"And I see a Lannister who was more honest than my own blood."

"Gods, what a joke," Tyrion mutters, looking down at his hands, at the glass that no longer contains any wine. And then a hand enters his vision and settles itself quite neatly on Tyrion's own left, warm for all that it's pale, large and calloused from a sword hilt and dexterous with a quill, and altogether unsurprisingly very welcome. Only a fool would rebuff such an earnest overture of friendship.

"Why so gloomy, my Lord Tyrion?" this man asks.

"Oh, self-pity and loneliness is all, I assure you," Tyrion says, deciding right here and now that while all the many gods are perhaps currently having a great laugh at his expense, that's no reason not to—take what he can when it's being offered. A friendly hand, a comforting voice, someone to share a glass of wine with, these are soothing things, small moments he's learned to appreciate, for in truth they are what makes life worth living, more than helping heal a realm or destroy a villain ever could. It's a person, a friend and brother and lover and sister and advisor and ally, who Tyrion needs, not accolades or power, but the respect and, yes, the love of someone. . .

Jon's hand squeezes Tyrion's.

"Oh, is that all?" Jon asks, and where there might be mirth or some stab at levity, some manly withdrawal as though showing familiarity and affection somehow made a man lesser and not stronger, there is Stark sincerity, practicality, a hand that doesn't let go, eyes that Tyrion meets and a fine person sitting opposite him.

"That is all," Tyrion says, turning his hand over and clasping Jon's hand in return, smiling despite himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Watching them together is oddly, brutally satisfying, often more fulfilling than directly participating—much like his entire life.

They don't appear to intentionally exclude Tyrion, both continually reaching for his hand or pulling him into a distracted kiss or caressing whatever part of him they can reach, but the fire burns brightest between just the two of them, as anyone could see, so Tyrion is forever attempting to make his peace with it before matters turn awkward and humiliating.

But.

This is the third time he's allowed himself to stumble along with them into this exact awkward situation, and he's almost tired of seeing, in excruciatingly precise detail, the full extent of what he cannot have.

Almost.

Almost.

So Tyrion carefully slides away from them, granting Jon more space to entwine as he sucks and kisses and licks his way deeper into Daenerys.

So Tyrion carefully removes Jon's left hand from his thigh, guiding it instead over to Dany's.

And he's almost successfully withdrawn completely when those eyes of hers suddenly alight on him, stopping him stupid. Unearthly purple that they are and familiar over the course of months and years of close association, Tyrion's still never seen her look at _him_ quite like this.

She looks at Jon like this all the time.

If he could live in just one moment forever, slow time to a crawl and breathe the same air over and over again forever, the same air as these two, smoldering purple and molten grey, Tyrion thinks this precise moment would definitely be in the running.

But that moment before the wedding, when he, Jaime, and Robert actually shared an embarrassingly long laugh about Father and Cersei's faces if Tyrion dared to stand and deliver an honest speech.

But that moment when Tysha looked him in the eye, put a cold hand to his cheek, and murmured, "Certainly more than is wise, m'lord."

But that moment when he first sat across from the last Targaryen queen, just the two of them, and he first glimpsed beyond her façade, and she said, eyebrows arched as she deftly plucked the goblet from his hand, "While you can still speak in complete sentences."

But, oh, that moment when he rode once again into Winterfell and was greeted by a ghost. . .  

Oh, Tyrion's seen these two furious and proud, doubtful and sarcastic, miserable and generous with their shockingly dissimilar yet hauntingly familiar features, reflections of each other, as they both laugh with him, look to him for strength and guidance, as if he is made up of, or has to offer, either. Two sets of eyes always narrow at him in shared frustration and widen in dampened shock, glance at Tyrion sidewise or from under ridiculously long sooty lashes, as they eternally orbit each other while he futilely orbits them both, here one playing the stoic to his clown, and there the other naïve youth to his aged tutor. They are neither and both and more besides, and he is only the interpreter.

And he stands just behind when children and soldiers, fearless and awful in their desire to be near them, lurch forward with cutting accolades.

That is where Tyrion sees himself: a buffer between them and those laying more unfounded guilt at their feet, between the human gods he himself worships and those seeking to make of them martyrs to unworthy causes, always a bridge connecting others and never ever himself.

He is bitter but resigned.

"You saved us!" the woman cried, falling to her knees, fingers twitching but not quite able to bring herself to touch the hem of Dany's lush gown. Dany's face contorted, but she didn't exclaim or cry at the ruin of the woman's face. Dragon fire, Tyrion could tell, and Dany surely would know the sight better than anyone. .  .

"My King," the old soldier rasped, bowing his head and holding up his ruined sword in shaking hands toward Jon, who clasped it and the man, drawing him up to his feet and speaking stirring words, while the old man looked at him, enraptured. His sigil proclaimed him from the Reach, but everything in Jon's face said the soldier was one of his own—and likely one he felt he'd failed somehow. . .

And Tyrion is there when their dragons speak more eloquently their intentions than even Tyrion could with all the words in creation at his disposal—when she smirks at Jon, looking fit to burst with laughter as Drogon curls round Rhaegal, or when Rhaegal bites teasingly at Drogon's tail as Jon bats her hand away when she tries to play with his hair, or when they sleep coiled and entwined in that massive bed of hers, their skin the others' scales, their heat speaking of banked fire, only slightly, temporarily, tamed.

A sober man might say it was torture, but here at their side Tyrion is witness to passion, slicing across him with dark pupils and thin irises and half-closed lids, gasping mouths red from kissing, and limbs glowing silver from sweat and heat, and Tyrion himself a mirror reflecting their love back at them, an appreciative audience for the unintentional display they cannot help but make of themselves. He is the contrast because what a poor substitute he would make for either.

To bask in that emotion and care and see unearthly beauty every day in every small gesture, Tyrion would gladly suffer greater than this.

And the pain of leaving would cut worlds deeper.

"Tyrion," she says now, and he blinks. "Come here," she almost growls.

Surrounding her, muscled arms cradling and enfolding her hips, long, sleek legs trailing across the bed, cheek resting against her pale thigh as he gasps between bouts, Jon is smiling as he stares at Tyrion: who is fully clothed and strange and not unearthly. Jon looks at him like he's wonderful, like all of this is wonderful, and Tyrion envies him, wants to not be envious of him, but Jon makes it look so easy to love without reservation, and in so doing—makes himself so easy to love.

Jon isn't Jaime, and Daenerys is thankfully no Cersei, but Tyrion often feels echoes for these two of what he felt for. . .

The longing has shifted, and while Daenerys is mesmerizing yet forever out of reach, Jon is somehow closer than Tyrion can withstand. If Tyrion were perhaps Jaime's shadow, looming large in mind and compressed small in body, then Jon is almost Tyrion's, almost Jaime's twi–

That moment when he rode into Winterfell and was greeted by a ghost who smiled and embraced him and said into his ear, snow drifting down and catching in his hair, "What a sight for sore eyes you are, Lannister."

Jon reaches out when Tyrion isn't expecting it, has actually prepared himself for nothing. He stretches and places his hand against Tyrion's cheek, smiling with his lips plump and red and wet from Dany, and for a moment, a brief agonizing moment of ecstasy Tyrion's afraid he's always been chasing: he sees not what he isn't, who he isn't, what he lacks, where he will always come up—short. Rather, he sees, as he moves into that hand, turning and pressing and kissing that calloused palm, and farther forward, darting closer and down and taking those sweet, salty, slippery lips in a kiss, a bite, a suck, instead of someone he stands behind, someone Tyrion stands _beside_ , someone else who occupies a place all his own, someone like Tyrion who wrestles with himself. Tyrion for once pushes closer and embraces what is freely offered. He moves to straddle Jon, who's straddling Dany, and he gladly pulls toward him a man who is both dragon and wolf and flawed and imperfectly perfect.

"My Lannister," Jon whispers against Tyrion's lips, his body vibrating with amusement, even as something in Tyrion, some bittersweet part of him clenches in agony.

Echoes, reflections, mirrors of everything they've always been, all that's made them who they are.

"No 'my lion'?" Tyrion teases, skirting one hand up Jon's throat and back around his skull to grab a hank of his hair and pull his head back, the other hand sliding down, down, down to grab his ass. "No 'my sweet dove'?" he asks in falsetto, and Dany lets out a loud bark of laughter, shifting her legs beneath Jon. "No," Tyrion asks, " 'my master'?" pushing at Jon, chest to chest, and splaying him out across the bed, across Daenerys Stormborn. "No 'my love'?"  

"My heart," says Daenerys suddenly, and Tyrion glances up at her, always up, glances at the lightness of tone but meets the intensity of her stare.

"I– " Jon starts to say, shifting to sit up, but Tyrion seizes him again by the throat, pulling him into a kiss and never breaking eye contact with Dany, whose eyes burn and rejuvenate and crush everything beneath her.

Jon is slightly more than human, other than mortal, but Tyrion thinks Dany is something else entirely.

No words then, only a deafening silence, blood echoing through his ears, broken and repaired by Jon's moaning and heavy breathing, his sighing, by Dany's laughter and whimpers and groans, whispers shared between them, snatches Tyrion doesn't even want to decipher. All is silenced in Tyrion's head, the horror, guilt, shame, worry, fear, hate, and remorse.

He is given and gifted, and they pull him beneath the rising tide, Dany's thighs falling wide open for Jon as she drags Tyrion almost as close, as she kisses Tyrion amidst Jon, as she moans into Tyrion's mouth, his neck, her hand encircling him and pulling, as she herself wholly encircles and pulls Jon.

Tyrion is here, alongside them both, outside himself, as Dany shouts and screams, her entire body heaving and shaking in yet another climax, as Jon, eyes silver and black and hair wild about his head, grabs Tyrion by the root and jerks, saying, breathless at his ear, in a moment outside of time, "My lord lion."  

Tyrion doesn't last, as Dany went first, second, and third, and Tyrion follows, and it's Jon at the end, as Tyron blinks after his own finish—Jon, whose back arches in a heartrendingly perfect curve, whose eyes roll back in his head before his lids slam shut, whose scars left by sword and fire stand out against his skin like brands.

Stark and honest and beautifully imperfect, the man Tyrion lov–


End file.
